Step-by-step: Use basic shapes to inform viewers of a character’s disposition

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Using one shape to define your character is a great way to get started. Adding more of the same shape helps sell your character’s personality: circles for cute characters, squares for strong and triangles for the scary aggressive types. It’s good at to nail down some strong poses for each figure, too.

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Now to flesh them out. Audiences will look to the facial features of your designs for a more conscious effort to get to know your characters, so giving them the right expression is pretty important. Adding some curved lines in with the straights on the body also creates some nice variation.

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It’s time to push your characters’ features to the limit! By enlarging some of your designs’ main shapes and pushing expressions to their extremes, we instantly know what each character is thinking. The shapes and pose complement the expression and we now have some memorable relatable characters.

Even if only slightly, try to avoid making your characters completely symmetrical. A little bit of hair variation or a crooked tooth can add heaps of interest to a design and make it stand out from the rest.